Wessside Story

Born along the famed shores of Makaha, raised in the malu of Mauna Kaʻala, nurtured atop the hill of Kapālama, and swaddled by the Kaiāulu of the unrivaled Waiʻanae Coast,

J.J. Kaʻōpua found her place as a peppy ʻōpio during the post-Hawaiian-Renaissance nineties Oʻahu. Back then, Hawaiians were a lot of things: passionate, proud, and maybe even a little pissed off at the unearthed miseducations of culture and history at the hands of American assimilation a century sooner. Most of all, they were misunderstood, misrepresented, and misinterpreted especially when it came to film, where there was little to no accurate portrayal of Kanaka onscreen. What that meant for a young girl in the middle of the Pacific who was always a writer at heart: it was storytime.

Initially leaning into her left-brained skillset, Kaʻōpua’s early career was stuffed with scenes from the highly glamorous world of corporate tax accounting. But, the die-hard creative in her always crept closely behind, eagerly filling her latest and most joyous hours with the motive and discipline to research and learn everything she could about the ever-elusive and ever-evolving world of screenwriting. At 27, she wrote her first feature film screenplay. By 30, another feature followed, and by 40, her portfolio had five completed works, including two pilots, with another six projects on the horizon. Eventually, a fortuitous encounter with legendary Friends creator, Marta Kauffman, encouraged Kaʻōpua to ditch the numbers for good, in order to take up writing full time. In 2025, her pilot episode for the TV Limited Series, “Calabash,” gained her a spot in the inaugural Native Hawaiian Storytelling Program. 

Between school drop-offs, hula rehearsals, speech contests, and the occasional off-island jaunt for some quiet QT with her ʻohana, Kaʻōpua trades institution for intuition, remaining reverent to every moment that inspires her work as a native daughter, mother, and keeper of the modern moʻolelo.